03/02/24 - 26/05/24
Natalie MALISSE et Camille SEILLES. Le cœur à même la peau
As part of their partnership, Le Soir and the Musée de la Photographie launched the Galerie du Soir. Alongside each new major exhibition at the museum, the Galerie du Soir presents a young emerging artist.
A four-part gamble on youth: a small but significant display at the museum, a portfolio in the quarterly magazine Photographie ouverte, a presentation of the photographer in Le Soir, and a selection of their work on the website www.lesoir.be. For this new edition of the Galerie du Soir, we have chosen Nathalie Malisse and Camille Seilles. Natalie Malisse and Camille Seilles both graduated from ESA le 75 in Brussels. ‘In school’, Natalie explains, ‘I studied Latin and Greek, then Latin and sciences and I was going to study biology. But at the end of secondary school, I wanted something else and so I enrolled at IHECS, where I quickly realized that I wanted to delve more into photography. I left after a year to enrol at ESA le 75. Initially, it was more like a sabbatical year, except that I really got into it. As a photographer, it is as if you get to live a thousand lives. When working on a project, you enter someone’s daily life and it’s really interesting and rewarding. It opened me up to worlds I didn’t know. After ESA le 75, I did a master’s degree in Ghent because I wanted a more theoretical approach, artistically speaking, and I also wanted to see what was happening on the other side of the language border. The fact that there were a lot of women in the photography workshop also played a role. It also allowed me to become more of a “visual artist”, something I probably wouldn’t have attempted without going to KASK.’
As there is no such thing as coincidence, her associate Camille had also planned initially on pursuing a career in science.
‘I grew up in Montpellier, where I studied science at school, and then I attended
an architecture school for a year and a
half before going to a film school. I took photography classes there and discovered that the still image was something that really appealed to me. I wanted to do more, but in France, schools were very expensive, very technical and with a lot of competition. So I went to Belgium, where a friend recommended ESA le 75. I immediately felt at home there on account of the human scale, the welcoming atmosphere and the fact that it was geared towards documentary photography. I wanted to make images, not for aesthetic reasons, but to find meaning in my way of being in the world. In fact, as Natalie said, photography is a bit like a pass that allows you to experience several lives, to have access to worlds we don’t know. For me, photography is a great excuse to meet people who interest me.’
At ESA le 75, the two young women were two years apart but quickly became aware of each other at a critical screening where Camille was presenting her work and which Natalie was attending. ‘I fell in love with her projects but I didn’t dare go up to her that day. A few weeks later, I saw her at the open house and that’s when I told her that the projects she had presented were why I had wanted to go to art school. After that, I think she kept an eye on me for a while in the months that followed and then, in the beginning of Summer, she invited me to work on a joint project. I was finishing my first year and she was completing her third one.’
‘I’d seen one of your early projects’, Camille continues, ‘where you talked about young people suffering from anxiety and depression. I thought it was really powerful, and I think we recognized in each other our desire to deal through photography with intimacy and mental health and in the way we wanted to approach people.’
Their joint project focused on Lou and Lola as they sought to find their place in their lives as young adults suffering from certain disorders. ‘It’s not about illness but about disorders’, Camille and Natalie explain. ‘Depression, anxiety, eating disorders, attention issues ...’
Their four-handed project is now being presented in the Galerie du Soir at the Musée de la Photographie. They explain: ‘Le cœur à même la peau is a photographic project with multiple sensibilities. A four- hearted creation, that looks at mental health through the intimate prism of Lola and Lou. As they move from intense relationships to disappointments, these two young adults carry the memories of childhood traumas as they go through life. Their multifaceted portraits reflect their ability to constantly reinvent and nuance themselves. The masks they wear conceal their personalities as much as they reveal them. Between obsession, fragility, precariousness, doubt and resilience, Lola and Lou face life with their hearts right under their skin.’
